Elusive Treasure, Object of a Pirate’s Affections

‘Le Corsaire’: American Ballet Theater With Natalia Osipova

American Ballet Theater Natalia Osipova (front, center) in "Le Corsaire" at the Metropolitan Opera House on Thursday night.Credit
Julieta Cervantes for The New York Times

American Ballet Theater is an inconsistent company: Its highs are so high, and its lows are so low. There are stellar dancers in questionable choreography. And few of its story ballets are as frivolous as “Le Corsaire,” which concludes the company’s Metropolitan Opera House season this week in a patched-up production, featuring staging by Anna-Marie Holmes after Marius Petipa and Konstantin Sergeyev.

The convoluted story loosely follows Byron’s narrative poem about the pirate world, in which abductions and rescues never go out of style. Truthfully, there is much fun in that, especially with a couple of Russian virtuosos in the mix.

Alas, on Thursday evening, the fun wasn’t completely present. As the third wheel to Natalia Osipova’s Medora and Ivan Vasiliev’s slave Ali, Johan Kobborg, the veteran Danish dancer, gave a fairly wooden portrait of the pirate Conrad. Next to the pyrotechnics of Mr. Vasiliev, Mr. Kobborg just seemed wilted.

The short version of this three-act ballet involves Conrad, who finds himself in a bazaar where Lankendem (Jared Matthews) is selling girls. He falls in love with Medora, but she is sold to a portly pasha (a hilarious Victor Barbee). Conrad orders Ali to steal her back — and spends the remainder of the ballet trying to hold onto her.

Previous Ballet Theater performances of “Le Corsaire” have allowed for more humor — this is a work that can take a touch of camp — but they didn’t have Ms. Osipova as Medora. She is a glittering technician, whose grands jetés soar through the air with so little effort that the sight of her lithe form hanging high above the stage is a shock every time.

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Still, her capacity for power is tempered by an innate gossamer fragility. In “Le Corsaire” Ms. Osipova possesses a winning freshness, but she’s funny as well. Some of her most charming moments were opposite Mr. Barbee’s pasha, as when she shuddered through her laughter while tickling his old-man beard.

Mr. Vasiliev, in his first entrance, flew through the air with an extreme arched back, which pretty much sums up his approach: This is a forceful, stocky dancer who goes for broke. As Ali, some of his airborne moves had more in common with the dynamics of martial arts than with ballet, but as he whipped high into the air and kicked a leg forward, he was thrilling all the same, making up with raw energy for what he lacks in refinement.

As Medora’s friend Gulnare, Yuriko Kajiya matched Ms. Osipova’s delicate strength on a lighter level. Isabella Boylston was the most impressive of the Odalisques, showing, as she has all season, the blossoming of her upper body. And Arron Scott, as Conrad’s traitorous friend, Birbanto, was sleek and rightly nasty.

In moments, individual dancers captured the silly, romantic spirit of “Le Corsaire,” but as a whole, the production was disconnected: It was the sort of performance that held you captive only in parts. With that, there was always the sinking suspicion that the dancers weren’t all on the same ship.

A version of this review appears in print on July 7, 2012, on Page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Elusive Treasure, Object Of a Pirate’s Affections. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe